On some Antiquities of the Mycenaean Age recently acquired by the British Museum

1897 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 63-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. B. Walters
Keyword(s):  
British Museum ◽  
The Past ◽  
Terminus Post Quem

The present paper is intended as a brief summary of acquisitions of the British Museum during the past ten years or so, which may be assigned to the Mycenaean period, and which have not as yet been published. The results of the Museum excavations at Curium and Salamis (Cyprus) in 1895–6 are not included, being reserved for publication elsewhere, and the gold treasure acquired in 1892 has been fully described by Mr. Arthur Evans in the Journal, vol. xiii. p. 195 ff. In the case of the vases the terminus post quem is afforded by the publication of Furtwaengler and Loeschcke's Mykenische Vasen in 1886; for the gems, by the issue of the Museum Catalogue in 1888.The most convenient classification for a description of this kind is perhaps a geographical one, but as in some cases the provenience of the objects is unknown or indefinite, I have thought it better to group them under the heading of material, with a geographical sub-classification, so far as such is practicable.

Some Bits of Horns from Folkestone

The Geologist ◽  
1861 ◽  
Vol 4 (11) ◽  
pp. 465-467
Keyword(s):  
British Museum ◽  
Basal Part ◽  
The Past ◽  
Rosetta Stone ◽  
History Of ◽  
Commercial Value ◽  
Future Thought

Old bones, that would be worthless to anybody else, become valuable to the geologist. There may be nothing picturesque or strikingly singular in their appearance. They may be too rotten or too fragile for the manufacturer; too sapless for the agriculturist; nay, too few or too far between to be of any commercial value at all. And yet bits of bones may be inscriptions of much value to the palæontologist. As every letter in the few lines incised on the famous Rosetta stone was a key to some passage in a forgotten language of the past, so every new bit of bone may be the key to some passage in that greater history of a greater past which geology unrolls. Many years ago—how time flies past—I met with a little patch of mammaliferous drift at Folkestone; I gathered every fragment of bone, every tooth, every shell, which the workmen's picks and spades exhumed, and most of what I could not determine myself at that time, Professor Owen, and my then living and active friend, Mr. Turner, looked over and named.Amongst the bones I then collected were two of form to me before unknown, and which I often since brought back to mind. Two—both fragments of horns—flat at the basal part, perfectly round towards the tip; no goat, nor antelope, nor deer, that I knew, had horns like them; and so those fragments were laid aside (not carelessly) for future thought and comparison. Shortly since in walking through the gallery of the British Museum, I visited the cases containing deers' remains, and there, at once I saw, not the counterparts, but what seemed to me the fac-similes of my bits of horns.

IV.—On the Fossil Sirenia in the British Museum (Natural History), Cromwell Road, S.W.

1885 ◽  
Vol 2 (9) ◽  
pp. 412-425
Author(s):  
Henry Woodward
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
British Museum ◽  
The Past

Among the vast additions which, during the past five years, have been made to the palæontological collections in the British Museum (Natural History), none probably possess greater interest to the naturalist and comparative anatomist than the remains of the very remarkable group of aquatic phytophagous mammals known as the Sirenia, of which the “Manatee” and the “Dugong” are the living representatives.

III.—A Synopsis of the Remains of Ganoid Fishes from the Cambridge Greensand

1895 ◽  
Vol 2 (5) ◽  
pp. 207-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arthur Smith Woodward
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
British Museum ◽  
Detailed Comparison ◽  
Present Writer ◽  
The Past ◽  
Private Collection ◽  
Definition Of

The remains of fishes discovered in the Cambridge Greensand are all very fragmentary, and have not hitherto been subjected to the detailed comparison with other Cretaceous Ichthyolites which their interesting stratigraphical position renders desirable. Many specimens, however, are capable of at least generic determination, while many others are sufficiently characteristic fragments for the definition of the species. The present writer has thus been much interested during the past few years in studying collections of these fossils, and the following notes embody some of the results in reference to the ganoid fishes. The British Museum (Natural History) having recently acquired the collection made from the Cambridge Greensand by Mr. Thomas Jesson, F.G.S., nearly all the known species are now represented here; but the writer has also availed himself of the privilege of making use of the fine series in the Woodwardian Museum, Cambridge, and the Philosophical Society's Museum, York, thanks to the kindness of Professor McKenny Hughes, Mr. Henry Woods, and Mr. H. M. Platnauer. Mr. James Carter, M.R.C.S., has also kindly lent some Pycnodont jaws from his private collection

Swanscombe: A Standard Stone-Age Sequence for Britain?

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne O'Connor
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
British Museum ◽  
Geological Survey ◽  
Research Centre ◽  
Stone Age ◽  
The Past ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Apparent Loss ◽  
Differences Of Opinion ◽  
Age Sequence

In the early twentieth century, Palaeolithic research seemed to be flourishing on the Continent. Commont was carrying out groundbreaking work in the Somme, and rich hauls were being recovered from the reindeer-caves of France and Spain. France could also boast a research centre: the Institute of Human Palaeontology, where Boule, Breuil, and Obermaier held posts. Britain, though, was weighed down by nostalgia: unfavourable contrasts were being drawn between current research and the glorious decades of the past when Evans and Prestwich had brought such renown to British investigations. This apparent loss of impetus was noted abroad. Boule considered the British to have sunk into insularity after 1875, never to regain their early brilliance; in 1912, Breuil remarked at a luncheon party in Cambridge that no one in England knew anything about prehistory. The British Museum’s Guide to the Antiquities of the Stone Age, published in 1911 at the height of Commont’s work, declared: ‘the French system has now been revised in the light of recent discoveries, and is the basis of all Continental classifications’. It was regretted that the English river drifts had still not received any systematic excavations, and that the implements in these sediments still lay in confusion. This Guide was produced by Reginald Smith of the British Museum under the direction of Charles Hercules Read (1857–1929). In 1912, the same year that Breuil made his disparaging comment, Read arranged for Smith to excavate in one of the most productive Palaeolithic localities of the Thames Valley: Swanscombe village. Smith was assisted by Henry Dewey (1876–1965) of the Geological Survey, but the negotiations that gained Dewey’s help would also reveal differences of opinion between their two respective institutions about the value of Palaeolithic research. The connections drawn by Smith to the Continental sequence after working at Swanscombe would lift the gloom about British backwardness. These connections would also help draw the Palaeolithic and geological sequences closer together.

Some Sources of 15th Century English Music

1949 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 65-67
Author(s):  
Manfred F. Bukofzer
Keyword(s):  
British Museum ◽  
List Type ◽  
Type Number ◽  
Separate Part ◽  
The Past ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
Annotated List ◽  
English Music

In the past years a number of manuscripts and small fragments have come to light which enlarge in various degrees our knowledge of 15th-century music in England. It may be useful to give a brief annotated list:1.British Museum, Add. MS 40011 B. Flyleaves from a Memorandum Book of Fountains Abbey containing three- and four-part settings of the Mass, and a few motets some of which are incomplete. The fragment is valuable especially for the concordances with the Old Hall MS.2.British Museum, Egerton MS 3307. Thematic catalogue: Schofield, The Musical Quarterly XXXII (1946), 509. This manuscript is one of the most important recent additions to English music of the Renaissance. It transmits a series of sacred compositions for Holy Week, and, in a separate part, carols with English words and Latin cantilenas for two and three voices. Of particular interest are a three-voice composition of the old Goliard song O potores exquisiti and a four-part motet Cantemus Domino socie, based in its text on the beginning of an elegy by Sedulius.

Cestraciont Fishes of the Chalk

The Geologist ◽  
1863 ◽  
Vol 6 (5) ◽  
pp. 161-163 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
British Museum ◽  
Good Work ◽  
Museum Specimens ◽  
The Past ◽  
Fossil Remains ◽  
The Subject ◽  
To Come ◽  
Port Jackson ◽  
Important Evidence

The yery fine specimen of palatal tooth of Ptychodus polygyrus, which we figure in Plate IX., from the collection of N. T. Wetherell, Esq., of Highgate, temporarily draws our attention to a class of remains of very considerable interest.We have not the leisure at the present time for going as deeply into the subject as it well deserves, nor as the mass of valuable materials accumulated since the publications of Agassiz in 1843, and Dixon in 1850, require.There are also other important points than the mere bearings of more detailed information of the characters of species very possibly to be gained by a study of the singular and marked group of cestraciont fishes. First known, in abundance of individuals, in the Carboniferous age—though not at any time numerous in genera,—and presenting various forms, numerically abundant, in the Jurassic and other intermediate formations up to the Chalk, characterized by its many varieties of Ptychodus, but now dwindled down to a solitary representative in the Port Jackson shark, it is one of those very circumscribed groups in which we ought to find more especially and distinctly marked traces of the transmutation of one species into another, if such transmutation did exist in the past ages of our planet. That the group does present important evidence on this point is certain, but whether sufficient or not to come to a practical and definite conclusion, may be as yet doubtful; although, if collectors will turn to the fossil remains of these fishes in earnest, we may rest assured of good work in this direction being done. By a glance at the British Museum specimens, and a careful looking over of the descriptions and figures in the ‘Poissons Fossiles’ and the ‘Geology of Sussex,’ any intelligent observer would at once see what new additions would be useful for supplying the missing links in the historic and stratigraphical series. We add here a list of the species of Ptychodus exhibited in our National Collection.

Virginia Woolf's Imaginary Museum of the Medieval in ‘The Journal of Mistress Joan Martyn’

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-184
Author(s):  
Caroline Marie
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Virginia Woolf ◽  
British Museum ◽  
National Narrative ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The Middle Ages

This article shows that the Middle Ages Virginia Woolf imagines in her 1906 short story ‘The Journal of Mistress Joan Martyn’ are influenced by the staging of the medieval in late-Victorian museums and reflects late-Victorian medievalism. From the perspective of material culture studies, Woolf's tale reflects the representation and fabrication of the medieval by the British Museum and the South Kensington Museum and shapes a similar narrative of the Middle Ages. Relying on Michel Foucault's definitions of ‘heterotopia’ as well as on Tony Bennett's analysis of Victorian museums, this article argues that Woolf's fictionalisation of the medieval evidences a new, complex temporality of knowledge and consciousness of the past which also defines late-Victorian curatorial philosophy and practices. It analyses each regime of that new temporality: first, the archaeological gaze and its contribution to the grand national narrative via the literary canon and, second, the theatrical gaze, with its focus on spectacularly displayed artefacts, that partakes of an image's mystique. In temporal terms, this results in a tension between the tangible remains of a past clearly separated from the present and the mystical fusion of past and present reinscribing Woolf's poetics of the moment within a sense of history.

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